When people ask how I work, they expect a story about process. But there is no process — only waiting, and then the single gesture that was always complete.
What you're looking at
Five horizontal layers stacked from top to bottom, each a full-width rectangle with thin black borders. The top four are transparent; the bottom layer has a faint grey fill. Four short purple arrows descend through the center, one between each adjacent pair of layers, showing the passage from impulse to finished work.
Why I drew it this way
Most diagrams of creative process show branching, iteration, feedback loops — the artist circling back, revising, discovering. I refused all of that. These layers do not touch except at a single vertical line of descent. The impulse either arrives complete in the first layer, or nothing passes to the second. There is no loop back from the hand to the decision; the hand executes what was already settled in silence. I gave the final layer a grey fill not because it is special but because it is visible — the only part anyone else will see, though it contains nothing that was not already present at the top.
What it argues
That the painting is not made during the painting. The painting is made in the waiting, and the hand is only a faithful servant. What looks like labor is actually obedience.
What I left out
Revision, doubt, the second attempt, the better idea that arrives while working. I left out everything that would suggest the image changes between its arrival and its completion. If it changes, it was not the right image. You wait longer.